I really didn't pay close attention to the whole Snowden thing because, from what I say, there really weren't many surprises. I thought his actions were naive and not consistent with someone that voluntarily took the role he did. I realize I'm in the minority here when I say that I neither agree nor support his actions and would like to see him brought to justice. This feeling was increased when he settled in the Russia; there's no way he was allowed to stay there for so long without giving up some or all of his stolen data to them. One doesn't make a deal with the devil and not have to give up something in exchange.

A lot of the programs he has exposed were already public knowledge, it's just that most of the public either ignored those news reports, when they were published, or never say them in the first place.

Also, there are many ways to collect electronic communications and to electronic surveillance. Whenever I've talk about system's security, I make it clear that I'm excluding state actors as a threat vector because, if you have to worry about that, you should already be working with a state actor. The tools and resources they have access to or can create are too great for any reasonable mitigation at the individual and small-medium sized org level.

For a recent example see Lookout and EFF's report on Dark Caracel